An electrical connector typically includes a conductive terminal for terminating a wire or other electrical element, and a non-conductive connector body for carrying the terminal. The connector body usually includes laterally opposed sidewalls and vertically opposed transversely extending walls between the sidewalls. The sidewalls and transversely extending walls generally define a terminal cavity for receiving the terminal. One of the transverse walls is a rigid retention wall including a lock nib projecting into the terminal cavity, and the terminal includes a lock edge that engages the lock nib to retain the terminal in the terminal cavity. The other of the transverse walls is a flexible hold-down beam having a protuberance projecting into the terminal cavity and contacting the terminal to bias the terminal into engagement with the lock nib.
Although this connector works very well in many applications, the flexural performance requirements of the flexible hold-down beam are not optimally suited for certain low strain materials. For example, connector bodies are increasingly molded from glass-filled polymers, which enable higher axial terminal retention performance but exhibit lower strain and flexural performance. Accordingly, small glass-filled connector bodies are not well suited for use with the conventional flexible hold-down beam. In fact, to accommodate use of glass-filled polymers for small connector applications, prior art designs require a two-piece connector. The typical two-piece connector includes a body and an intermediate engagement member carried by the body. The intermediate engagement member may be a terminal position assurance (TPA) device, a primary lock reinforcement (PLR), or the like. But such designs can increase complexity and cost of small connectors.